


down in the river, to pray

by cousingreg



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Christianity, Family, Introspection, Other, Religious Conflict, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29186997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cousingreg/pseuds/cousingreg
Summary: A prayer on his lips as his son is born, as the fire of guns and explosions in a desert land encase him, eyes shifted shut with a picture of his son clutched between fingers. An understanding and love that no one can ever comprehend unless they’ve had it. Touched it. Tasted it.“You did good, Diaz.” They tell him, but his eyes shift shut in pain as a prayer slips by for all the fallen, the unsaved,‘I’m sorry.’
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	down in the river, to pray

**Author's Note:**

> _"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."_ Jeremiah 17:9-10.

The choir singing is what Eddie remembers and loves most of his childhood hours spent in a building filled with large arch ways. Intimidating in their own way, but just as lovely and beautiful in his own human one. Gold silken covers and ordainments of faith, clothed in ritual and understanding from times longer before and since. As a child he’d kneel when told and listen to the latin he was being taught but never really fully understood. Childlike eyes of wonder as he stared at the _blood_ and the _flesh_. Consumed.

His mom’s hand on his back, pushing him forward to take his communion. Prayer on his lips as his heart soared into something else. Nothing could ever compare as the Lord’s spirit descended on them all in the voices of angels. Or like.

A prayer on his lips as his son is born, as the fire of guns and explosions in a desert land encase him, eyes shifted shut with a picture of his son clutched between fingers. An understanding and love that no one can ever comprehend unless they’ve had it. Touched it. Tasted it.

“You did good, Diaz.” They tell him, but his eyes shift shut in pain as a prayer slips by for all the fallen, the unsaved, ‘ _I’m sorry._ ’ The guilt pools in and tears slip into his eyes as he thinks of his son, so small and young, and without a father. But he’ll always have the best One with him, baptized in the water of saints. His blood mingled with the salvation of his very soul. Eddie prays for him, too.

Thirty seven and he’s at home without his son, his son off to his parents for a trip, and he is alone. He feels the sun kissed touch of a Father more precious than pearls or gems, but there’s a rejection here. An uncertainty, a lost feeling fading with his faith. He brings it into himself, holding onto it for all it’s worth, one word and name keeping it all together, ‘ _Yeshua_.’

And yet still he drinks and drinks until he forgets Buck’s blue eyes and his warmth, and his love, too. Drinks until all he can do is order a taxi cab and wonder over and over the questions he’s afraid to ask. To understand.

 _If what I feel is wrong, than why do I feel this way?_ He answers his own questions, biblically and philosophically because he knows the truth. Feels it with every beat of his heart and every beat of the voices filed with spirit, with something like angelic grace. _Because we have choice, free will, because our God is loving and he would not cage us. We can choose the good over the evil._ And then softly whispering in his ear like a traitorous and conspiratorial, loving voice, _‘the heart of man is deceitful above all things.’_

 _Why not destroy us? We’re terrible. Awful. Undeserving. **Sinners.**_ He thinks it, and just as suddenly the answer comes in a voice much like his own, but somehow more than he could ever be, ‘ _Could you kill your own child? Could you ever stop loving him? Would you allow no judgment to pass him when he does something wrong?_ ’

But what is wrong?

God knows. He knows more. Knows _Right._

He drives along by city lights and wonders of love and family, of marriage, and how unfair the world is. Who he really blames. God? For not interfering more? The devil for interfering too much? Or _us_? The human beings who are so easily influenced and broken, and _flawed._ Sinners. Lost and suffering, fallen creatures, but suffering all the same. Salvation and love, and that taste of grace, filling him in the echoes of a church’s walls. In the touch of another’s heart, in the love of his son, of a Father who will never fail or leave. In the taste of the sun rising and falling, of the moon and stars of wonder, of _creation_.

But he loves Buck, too. Feels things he’s not supposed to.

He doesn’t knock on the door, he’s filled with rum and warm tears threatening to fall as the world caves and crashes in. On himself. He finds Buck sitting on his couch, darkness of the night surrounding him as the TV plays with shadows and light cascading on beautiful flesh. Eddie walks over as Buck’s eyebrows raise in surprise and concern. “Eddie?” He asks. “What are you doing here?” But before he can ask more, get up, or move, Eddie goes to him. Drunkenly and blurrily, filled with grace and love, and all hard questions that make him feel like he’s being crushed from all sides and angles, he falls into Buck, onto the couch. Head in his lap and body curled up. Gasping on breath on the sob breaking to fight free, filled with just as much sorrow as love, just as much understanding as confusion.

Buck’s hands are held up, confusion evident in his freezing up of muscle and tissue. But then they fall, warm hands on flesh, one in his hair and the other on his shoulder, pulling him in and close. “Shh…” He whispers, a kiss in his hair and hand raking through locks that fall out of their gelled embrace, easily.

He’s sobbing. Crying.

Eddie feels like he’s been torn apart, broken and a chasm is forming, a river flowing out as he takes Buck’s hand, clutched in his. He wraps it around himself, around his chest, body, right to his heart. Beating along with. He feels the fingers in his hair curl around, hold on just as much as Eddie tries to, too.

“It’s okay, Eddie, I’ve got you, sweetheart.” Buck promises.

And Eddie smiles in a drunken and painful love filled daze, because God has him, too.

His eyes slip tightly shut and he swears he hears those angels singing, praying in a river of humanity. And as with all the other sinners… _He prays._

**Author's Note:**

> *Yeshua is Jesus in Hebrew.


End file.
